We weren’t out of the driveway when we suffered our first broken item of the 3-month trip.
I had the under-the-coach battery bay door open when Charlie decided to open the bedroom slide right above it to stow some clothes. Kaboom, the exterior bay door was ripped off of the coach! Bad words were said.
The hinged bay door panel, which was secured by rivets, was pulled apart and bent. There was no time to take the thing to a metal shop, even if I knew of one in Mesquite. So, Lloyd and I had to brainstorm a way to gently bend the thing back into shape without cracking the expensive paint coat and rehinge it to the coach.
It took us a couple of hours, but we managed a creditable job, in my opinion. I don’t believe that it will fly off going down the road and only a Monaco owner could tell that the bay door is slightly different than before.
So, on we go to the next emergency.
Good news! Lloyd has decided to stay put in Mesquite for the immediate future. He bought a 2019 Toyota 4Runner on Tuesday in St. George and has agreed to rent a house here in Sun City while he sorts out his life options. Hip, hip, hooray!
It’s 106 degrees right now (11:45 a.m., Wednesday), on the way to 109 degrees at 2 p.m. Man, am I going to miss this!!
Lloyd is taking us out for a steak dinner tonight to thank us for our generosity in letting him stay here for the past month. All three of us had a good time and the pooches love him, too. Lloyd will be here until July 15th, when he moves into his rental house.
We found out today that son Tim and wife Shanon are not going to be able to join us in Oregon for a brief vacation. Darn. However, we have invited Lloyd to come up to Coos Bay or Brookings if he can swing it and perhaps sister Claudia and husband Ted can drop by. We will see what happens.
I am taking my $50 bike that I acquired during the community yard sale. Maybe I can get some use out of it in Oregon and So Cal.
Of course, as soon as we were about to leave for Tonopah, the Norcold (“never cold”) refrig went on the fritz. Lloyd and I went to Walmart and bought an Igloo cooler; Charlie and I will use that until we get someone to repair the fridge (probably in Coos Bay). Until then, we will be buying bags of ice and managing our coolness. As the Marine/R.V. Owner motto goes, “Improvise, adapt and overcome”.
We drove to Tonopah: no problems. We drove to Reno: no problems. We drove to Weed: no problems.
Knock on wood!
We are now in Canyonville, Oregon and the best RV park I’ve ever stayed in: Seven Feathers. The location is great (just off of I-15), the scenery is great (lots of pine trees in a mountain canyon), the RV sites have concrete pads and plenty of landscaping, there is a great truck stop on the property (cheaper fuel because it’s on an Indian reservation), and a very nice casino/hotel/restaurant complex at our disposal. When you check in, a guy in a golf cart escorts you to your site. If you get a Player’s Card at the casino, they take 10 percent off your RV park site rental. Sweet!
Those pesky redskins may have lost some battles, but they won the war against us palefaces: oodles of money going into the tribal coffers here. Good for them because they are doing a First Class job.
Another great thing they have in this RV park (besides an indoor pool!) is spacious and well-maintained pet areas. The one near our site has about 3,000 s.f. of luxury artificial turf for the dogs to enjoy. Vinnie has had a chance to meet and bark at several different dogs: he’s loving it.
The weather has changed, to be sure. Today’s high is 75, with the overnight low at 56 degrees. We slept last night with the windows open and didn’t wake up until 7:40 a. m. That’s about 90 minutes later than we do in Mesquite, Nevada. Hooray for cool weather!!!
Tomorrow is July 4th, Independence Day. We leave here on the 6th, when we will have a couple hour drive to Coos Bay (actually Charleston, Oregon). There we will settle in for a one-month stay at Oceanside RV Resort.
The coach is running good so far. If you figure that there are about one million different parts and systems in this motorhome, we’ve been pretty lucky that only ONE is giving us fits right now. The drive train is working like a dream, the air leveling system seems to be fixed, the TV is good, the washer/dryer is A-OK, and everything else seems to be holding together.
So far. Fingers crossed.
I can hardly wait to get to Coos Bay so I can get our refrig fixed. Buying ice each day sucks. Plus, I’ve had to prematurely barbeque up all of my filet mignon steaks and cube them (for salads, burritos, etc.) so that they wouldn’t spoil. Geez, life is tough out on the road. I’m thinking of retiring…
Fuel prices have been all over the place on this trip. I think I paid $6.21 per gallon in Mesquite, then I put another $400 in the tank in Reno (about $6.80/gal), then another $150 in Weed (maybe $6.60/gal), and I’ll probably do another top off here at Seven Feathers where diesel is at least $0.80 /gal cheaper because we’re on sovereign Indian land. Hooray, Native Indians! I like to head off to the Oregon coast with a full tank because there aren’t many gas stations there (and no truck stops) and I will have plenty of fuel to last me until I get back to Weed in September.
One of the things that I like about RV camping up here in Oregon is that we get to see a lot of families (with young kids) out on vacation, having a blast. It reminds me of my youth and the places my parents used to take us and of the vacations that Charlie and I had with our four boys back in the day. Those kids absolutely loved their camping experiences and speak about them to this day. Son Jeff and wife Carol are all set to full-time RV beginning January 1. I hope that it works out well for them.
The dogs are adjusting nicely. They’ve done this before and find things to do in the coach like nap, eat, fight over toys, wrestle with each other, and bug us to take them for walks. Vinnie, the newcomer to this lifestyle, is taking it in stride. He likes to pester Baby and this is an ideal place for that because Baby has nowhere to escape. She’s really great at playing with Vinnie: he’s a lucky guy that she’s so mellow and eager to participate. BonBon loves looking out the window at people, animals, and nature. She has a professional grade sniffer, so the different smells of Oregon really keep her interested.
Charlie, the dogs, and myself are adapting to our Three Dog Night in the Queen bed. We are used to a California King at home, so we have to snuggle pretty good in the RV to make it work for everyone. It would be a disaster at home (because of the heat), but up here the nighttime low is around 57 so we just leave the windows open and enjoy Mother Nature.
Arrived in Coos Bay (Charleston) at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, July 6th. We will be here at Oceanside RV Resort, on the beach, until August 2nd.
Nice.
Except that our refrig is still on the fritz. We hope to get a repairman on this problem within the week.
Improvise, adapt, overcome….